Tuesday, August 03, 2010

Sunday Funnies Stamps

One more thing about the USPS: I bought a sheet of Sunday Funnies stamps at a post office last week. Five comic strips were selected for the series: Beetle Bailey, Calvin & Hobbes, Archie, Garfield and Dennis the Menace. Not the strips I would have chosen, except for C&H, if the selection criteria were (1) really popular strips (2) beginning after World War II, but not including Peanuts, which got its own stamp, and certainly deserved it. Older strips were covered by a 1995 release.

Archie -- isn't that really a comic book, not a Sunday funny? Dennis the Menace and Beetle Bailey make me shrug, but that one that really rankles is Garfield, which is easy to hate. On the other hand, this version of the strip, Garfield Minus Garfield, actually makes me laugh.

But I have odd tastes. Eyebeam, for instance, should have its own stamp, except that almost no one has ever heard of it. Assuming the choices have to be popular, what of Bloom County? For Bill the Cat, if no other reason. Or Get Fuzzy, for another cat -- that's two comic strip cats that put Garfield to shame. And, though I don't always like it, what about Dilbert, which certainly qualifies as a cultural phenomenon? Or Doonesbury? Its heyday might have been decades ago, but it was quite a heyday.